Breaking down silos inside and outside Microsoft

Not all presence and contact data at Microsoft is created equal. The contact list created by Microsoft Communicator/Office Communications Server 2007 users is different from the ones being created and shared by Windows Live users across the various Live Mail, Live Messaging, Live Expo and Live Spaces properties.

Microsoft's Unified Communications Group is all about breaking down the communication silos of e-mail, instant-messaging and voice-mail. That's how UCG officials have explained their charter and technology roadmap, at least.

On December 12, Microsoft announced that it was commencing a private beta of Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007, the next release of its corporate instant-messaging/audio/video/voice conferencing product. As part of the beta, Microsoft made the OCS 2007 test bits available to 2,500 IT professionals. Testers will be able to work with the new VOIP support that Microsoft is building into OCS 2007, which will enable users to launch VOIP calls from directly within their Office 2007 desktop apps. By doing so, users will be able to access another user's "presence" status and let that person know, via a subject line, the purpose of a VOIP call.

But it is interesting to note that not all presence and contact data at Microsoft is created equal. The contact list created by Microsoft Communicator/OCS users is different from the ones being created and shared by Windows Live users across the various Live Mail, Live Messaging, Live Expo and Live Spaces properties. Microsoft advises customers who want to share contacts across Office Communicator/OCS and Windows Live to rely on federation to share that data.

And Microsoft's strategy, announced this summer, to embed Windows Live directly into devices, like phones? No connection whatsoever with what Microsoft's UCG team is doing with communications vendors around VOIP.

Microsoft is a big company with lots of product and technology silos of its own. But shouldn't VOIP teams within the same company be communicating among themselves?